Labour Contracts and Labour Relations in Early Modern Central Japan

Mary Louise Nagata

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2004
• Print ISBN: 9780415346054
• eBook ISBN: 9781134281435
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Storia
• Subtopic: Storia dell'Asia

Based on a collection of labour contracts and other documents, this book examines the legal, economic and social relations of labour as they developed in the commercial enterprises of Tokugawa Japan. The urban focus is Kyoto, the cultural capital and smallest of the three great cities of the Tokugawa period, but the data comes from a wider region of commercial and castle towns and rural villages in central Japan.

1 Capitalism, industry and the organization of labor

Wage labor played an important role in the economic and social systems of early modern Japan. Labor migration was an integral part of the demographic and family systems influencing the age patterns of leaving home and marriage, as well as inheritance practice. The income generated by the wage labor of family members contributed to the economic stability of small farms and the skills learned through service and apprenticeship allowed the spread of skilled proto-industrial production in the countryside.

Wage labor was also an important part of the commercial economy. Commercial and manufacturing enterprises of varying sizes in a variety of industries such as textiles, paper, dyeing and brewing relied upon wage labor for both production and management. Skilled labor was generally trained in-house through apprenticeships, while unskilled or semi-skilled labor tended to be hired on a casual basis.

The commercial and industrial development of early modern Japan provided an important foundation for the economic development of modern Japan. Walk into any liquor store, or look at other businesses, and the evidence is there for anyone to see. The labels for various brands of sake and soy sauce proudly announce that their breweries were founded in the sixteenth or seventeenth centuries. Major department stores, such as Takashimaya, Daimaru and Mitsukoshi, were established in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Mitsui and Sumitomo, two of the famous four zaibatsu monopoly capitalists of the early twentieth century that remain important financial and industrial capitalists today, established their businesses in the seventeenth century. In addition to these large, well-known businesses, there are numerous medium and small enterprises established during the early modern period that survive to the present.

The organization of labor, labor markets and labor relations play an important role in the histories of these older companies. Their traditions regarding labor have influenced later developments, the adaptation of new or foreign methods of management and the labor relations in newer businesses. Moreover, the very existence of these businesses – representing the commercial and industrial economy – is important to understanding this period of Japanese history, which is known also as the Tokugawa period (1603–1868) for the ruling political regime. The continued survival of small, medium and large businesses established during the Tokugawa period also suggests continuity in management practice and labor relations, as well as change and adaptation to later developments such as the Industrial Revolution.

Written labor contracts are an important aspect of labor relations. A written contract provides objective evidence of the contract relation and the contract agreement. Labor contracts reveal the economic relations of labor and the mechanisms developed to resolve conflict. Since contracts tend to specify preventive measures against potential conflict, this information can also reveal the areas considered as having potential for conflict. Information in a contract can also provide evidence of hiring patterns and the labor market. This study uses early modern labor contracts and other documents collected from a wide variety of businesses in central Japan.

The organization of labor in early modern Japan developed with little or no outside influence. Yet many enterprises from this period were able to meet the challenges of time, mechanization, and the global economy of the twentieth century. Economic and social historians have far too often focused on Britain or the United States as the only models for successful development. The labor and business practices of Tokugawa Japan provide an alternative developmental back-ground for a successful modern national economy.

In this first chapter, I outline the historical and theoretical framework for this study, as well as survey the literature on the topic. A complete survey and discussion of the research literature on the economic history of Tokugawa Japan would be an entire book in itself. Therefore, the survey is limited to the major themes and debates regarding the social economy of Tokugawa Japan as they have changed over time. Finally, I introduce my data, sources and methodology and outline the remaining chapters of this study.

Changing perspectives on Tokugawa Japan

Much of the research on Tokugawa Japan can be characterized as debate a over which model taken from the Western European historical tradition best describes Tokugawa Japan and what can then be said about Tokugawa society based on the model. This debate has continued for more than a century and still continues today. The inability to gain a consensus on the appropriate model is partly due to changes in these models over time, but also because the fit of the closest models is uncomfortable.

In the debates that have unfolded since the end of the nineteenth century, the “feudal” point of view has probably been the most persistent. Great scholars like Max Weber considered Tokugawa Japan to be a feudal society, very much like Western Europe before the advent of capitalism, with the shōgun as the leader of a military aristocracy and the daimyō as his vassals. According to Weber, Japan's peculiarity consisted in its strangulation of foreign trade, the absence of urban autonomy and the blocked development of a “bourgeois” class.¹

Several Marxist historians have supported a similar idea.² They interpret feudalism primarily as a specific mode of production, which is often characterized as follows: a society “dominated by the land and a natural economy, in which neither labor nor the products of labor were commodities. The immediate producer – the peasant – was united to the means of production – the soil – by a specific social relationship. […] The property was privately controlled by a class of feudal lords, who extracted a surplus from the peasants by politico-legal relations of compulsion”. This extra-economic coercion could take the form of “labor services, rents in kind, or customary dues owed to the individual lord by the peasant”.³

One of the first Japanese scholars arguing the feudal thesis was Uchida Ginzō, who emphasized Japan's fragmentation into some 260 domains, each under the control of a lord called daimyō.⁴ From a Marxist perspective, Hattori Shisō made a similar argument in 1928.⁵

The feudal thesis was weakened, however, by scholars revealing the importance of non-feudal elements in Tokugawa society. Perhaps the first scholar arguing along these lines was Fukuda Tokuzō in 1900.⁶ Tsuchiya Takao, in 1927, discussed the development of a money economy and drew attention to its role in the break-down of the feudal control of the Tokugawa house.⁷

Other scholars took up the debate from a cultural history perspective, arguing that Tokugawa society was quite modern and should be seen as a transitional period. This argument received the praise and support of the imperial Government and was therefore pushed aside in the post-war period. Hattori Shisō (1933) added to this perspective when he began the Manufactures Debate, arguing that the economy of the late Tokugawa period, particularly the manufactures, should be examined to determine its stage of capitalist development.⁸ Tsuchiya, in reply, argued that “manufacture” could not have been a common form of industrial organization during this period.⁹

The immediate post-war debate was further stimulated by the economic theory of Ōtsuka Hisao. Ōtsuka did not directly participate in the effort to characterize Tokugawa Japan. His concern was the application of Weberian theory upon European history. His major contribution to the Tokugawa debate was his thesis regarding the importance of the rise of manufactures to the transition to capitalism. By manufactures, Ōtsuka refers to the production in workshops and manufactories such as those found in eighteenth century England just before the Industrial Revolution. Thus, Ōtsuka saw manufactures as one step away from mechanized production.¹⁰ Ōtsuka's thesis has many similarities to the later proto-industrialization theory developed by Franklin Mendels around 1970, although the Ōtsuka model also differs from the proto-industrial model in important ways. Most important for our purpose, however, is that Ōtsuka focused on the rise of manufactures as an important step in the transition from feudalism to capitalism, a topic of hot debate at this time. The manufactures of Ōtsuka's model correspond to the proto-industries of the Mendels model.¹¹

In the post-war Tokugawa Manufactures Debate, all of the participants agreed that Tokugawa society was feudal, but their question now was whether it was truly feudal, or a transitional stage to capitalism. The feudal side of the debate also tended to see Tokugawa society as repressive and full of hardship for peasants and other commoners. The transitional side of the debate took a slightly more positive view. This debate took place at the same time as the Dobb–Sweezy debate and other debates regarding the nature of feudalism and the transition to capitalism, a period when the Western definitions of feudalism underwent some change.¹² The application of these models to Tokugawa Japan affected what scholars expected to find regarding labor and production in the Tokugawa economy.

One example of the “feudal” argument is from Honjō Eijirō, who argued that peasant hardship from feudal exploitation caused many peasants to be forced off the land. There is, however, little discussion as to what happened to these poor peasants after leaving the land, or where they went.¹³

An example of the manufactures and transition argument is a study by Fujita Gorō and Hatori Takuya on the economy of the Aizu domain. In this study, they examine the various types of labor relation – pawn service, wage service, and casual labor – for signs of the development of free labor and a proletariat. They concluded that these types could be considered free labor, but that only a portion of the last form, casual labor, could be considered a proletariat. Fujita and Hatori also examined the wealthy peasant class and their investment in manufactures. They concluded that this was largely private investment that was, however, not opposed by the feudal lord.¹⁴

The Manufactures Debate produced a large amount of excellent microlevel research that I rely upon as background for my analyses. This research has several general characteristics. The research focus was narrow, focusing upon one industry, one village, one district or one domain, such as the above research by Fujita and Hatori on the Aizu domain. Nevertheless, this narrow focus was often used to make broad generalizations regarding Tokugawa economy and society as a whole. They considered practices progressive and modern if similar to the Western European model and backwards if they differed from that model. In the study mentioned above, Fujita and Hatori made much of casual labor as free labor, but felt that much of it was backward, because it was seasonal labor performed by farmers in their off-season rather than by a landless proletariat.¹⁵

Around 1960, a new movement in the study of Tokugawa economic history appeared under the influence of Western scholars applying modernization theory to Tokugawa Japan. The Tokugawa regime could hardly be thought of as modernizing society in the Western sense, since many of the progressive practices noted in modernization theory were regarded as undesirable. Nevertheless, modernization theory led scholars to consider social and cultural developments during the Tokugawa period – such as the spread of literacy – as important factors in the economic development of the later Meiji economy. This research trend has several important characteristics for the historiography of Tokugawa economic history. First, it opened the possibility for a positive interpretation of the research in the Manufactures Debate. Second, it re-defined the debate, to focus on the Tokugawa origins of later economic development, particularly the origins of Japanese capitalism. Third, scholars began considering Tokugawa society in relation to the rest of the world, and as part of the rest of the world, instead of as being wholly independent.

The examination of the Tokugawa economy for the roots of later economic development also had two opposing interpretations. One interpretation considered that the economic development of the Meiji period had its roots in the Tokugawa economy. The work of Thomas C. Smith is characteristic of this perspective in his book The Agrarian Origins of Modern Japan, published in 1959. In this study, Smith focuses largely on the types of labor and labor relations found in rural villages, arguing that change was not sudden and that Tokugawa practices continued into the twentieth century. Also notable is that Smith brings family history into consideration.¹⁶

The opposing interpretation saw Meiji economic development and later modernization as a sudden rapid change. Johannes Hirschmeier, for example, focuses upon the question of how Meiji Japan made a great leap into industrialization from feudal Japan. Hirschmeier argues that rural manufacturing in Tokugawa Japan failed to move to modern industrial enterprise because rural success prevented rural–urban migration, which he saw as necessary for successful entrepreneurship. He also argues that technological backwardness and lack of government promotion were further factors behind unsuccessful development.¹⁷ In other work, he continues the pattern of the post-war Manufactures Debate of continuous comparison with a Western European standard with any differences seen as back-ward or wrong.¹⁸ Lockwood also follows this trend claiming that there was little trade beyond rice and some luxuries while acknowledging the existence of wide-spread manufacturing.¹⁹

Nevertheless, Japanese economic development in the 1970s and later was accompanied by more positive interpretations of Japanese history, particularly of Tokugawa Japan as the origin of Japanese modernity. Research focused on commercial development and standard of living, as well as the commercial importance of manufactures. Demographic patterns and analysis also came under consideration from this time.²⁰ Scholars began to focus more on commercial enterprises, instead of the organization of production labor in manufactures. In particular, the labor organization and business structure of major commercial enterprises, such as the Mitsui businesses, the Omi merchants, and Kikkoman soy sauce breweries, attracted attention.²¹

Around 1980, new trends entered the Western historical debate and these were applied to Tokugawa Japan. The main new concept that redefined manufactures and the Manufactures Debate was proto-industry and the proto-industrialization theory of Mendels. Saitō Osamu focused on the application of proto-industrialization theory to the Tokugawa economy in 1985, while also comparing the theory to that of Ōtsuka Hisao. According to Ōtsuka, rural industry developed in areas where farming was productive and could build up basic capital. Mendels, however, claimed that proto-industrialization occurred in areas where farming was not very productive. Mendels also took a demographic perspective, relating the issue of mechanization to population pressure rather than market pressures. Neither theory directly addresses the transition to mechanized industry.²²

The differences in the two theories have a potentially major effect upon the interpretation of research findings. Scholars using Ōtsuka's theory to investigate the regions where manufactures were important in the late Tokugawa period would expect agriculture and the local markets to be relatively advanced compared to other regions, whereas those using the proto-industrialization theory would expect the opposite. This difference became important later, when scholars began integrating the findings from micro research into a macro view of Tokugawa economic history.

Saitō also made his comparison with England explicit, devoting several chapters in his study to analysis of English data and comparing these analyses ...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Labor Contracts and Labor Relations in Early Modern Central Japan
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of illustrations
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Capitalism, industry and the organization of labor
• 2 Stem family and lineage businesses
• 3 Labor organization in industry
• 4 Labor contracts and contract labor
• 5 Workers, guarantors and migration patterns
• 6 Contract conditions
• 7 Conflict and resolution
• 8 Labor in early modern Japan and beyond
• Appendix A: Data sources
• Appendix B: Translations of selected documents
• Appendix C: Glossary of terms
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index